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In:Pragmatic Development in First Language Acquisition
Edited by Danielle Matthews
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 10] 2014
► pp. 279–294

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Narrative Development across Cultural Contexts

Finding the Pragmatic in Parent-Child Reminiscing

 | Universidad de Costa Rica
 | Amherst College
Published online: 26 June 2014
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.10.16car
Children learn the pragmatic conventions of storytelling during family reminiscing. This chapter discusses differences in narrative development and narrative practices observed during reminiscing in two different cultural groups: children from mainstream, white, Anglo, middle-class families and Latino children and their families. Our review indicates both groups differ with respect to the way they structure, contextualize and evaluate their narratives. Different from European communities, Latinos deemphasize the chronological structuring of their stories. Children in both cultures learn to contextualize information within a narrative, but Latinos emphasize the contextualization of characters, usually their relatives. Both groups introduce evaluation while storytelling, through the use of different strategies. Implications of these differences for the educational context are pointed out.
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